Hello world. Welcome to day one of 2014 SXSW. It’s off to a much better start than the last two years. No rain, no wind, just a comforting blanket of smog. Festival goers are devouring Korean barbecue with gusto at outdoor picnic tables.

In the time-honored tradition started by former Pando writer Erin Griffith, rather than bombarding you with a thousand stories an hour, I’ll be providing you with a daily roundup of everything you need to know from the conference, plus any odds and ends and weird Austin goings-on that I think you might get a kick out of. Also, I’m a SXSW newb so you’ll enjoy it through my unsullied eyes.

SXSW attendees didn’t bother waiting for the start of the festival to get their drink on. The parties started last night, with Sprinklr + Dachis bash at the Cedar Street Courtyard. There was supposed to be an open bar, but it didn’t make an appearance.

My more experienced SXSW friends were miffed about that, but it didn’t keep a hundred or so hipsters and techies from throwing back shots and dancing. A really old guy showed up. So did a guy dressed as Luigi. By eleven everyone was black out drunk and doing the bump ‘n grind.

The SXSW vets I was with muttered “Amateurs.” Apparently SXSW is a “marathon” and these drunk rookies were “sprinting.” Duly noted.

Today at the festival itself there was room to breathe, working wifi, and free coffee at the Hilton that kept magically refiling itself into the afternoon. SXSW was already putting the hell of CES to shame.

Oreo is already winning the brand marketing game with its #eatthetweet “Trending Vending Machine.” It’s exactly what it sounds like. Users pick a trending social media hashtag on the vending machine and it 3D prints a customized Oreo based on that. One woman couldn’t decide between #bitcoin or #thetonightshow and finally went with #jenniferlawrence (lemon+sherbet+chai).

In the corner an Oreo PR person consulted with a group of reporters saying things like “This is the future of food, what with 3D printed pizzas.” Moving on…

Most of the pedicabs are spattered with boring ads from the likes of Braintree and Nest. One guy wasn’t down with the corporate messaging and chose to strap a giant white speaker to his lift instead, blasting reggae. Good life choices.

By 6:26 am on the first day, Wired had already written the predictable “At SXSW, the Next Big Thing May Be No Thing at All” post.

At today’s interactive keynote, speaker Austin Kleon — New York Times bestselling author of Show Your Work! — opened by asking an age-old question: Is SXSW over? Given I have no idea who you are, let’s just say yes and stop asking.

At the startup village at the Hilton there were lots of delightfully awkward panels happening, apparently per usual. Political correctness was not on the agenda. The opening line at the 3:30 session of foreign startups pitching experts was “We will start with the only woman of the entire group, but she counts for ten women.” Which is how gender equality works.

Next door was the drably titled “Founders Stories.” Just as boring as you might expect, except for when the founder of “Uber-for-massages” company Zeel went on a tangent to explain he does not run a prostitution business. Even though people come to your houses to give you massages it’s all above board. Breathe a sigh of relief. But no other kind of relief.

The moderator’s transitioning joke to the next speaker, “So your business sounds like everybody’s happy but no one gets a happy ending.” He was pretty pleased with himself for that one.

As for tonight’s shindigs, Newsweek is throwing a bash to celebrate its big clusterfuck of a Bitcoin launch story. Should be fun with lots of shame and anger drinking. We’ll be there, and will report back tomorrow.

Booker, which helps service businesses better engage with customers online, has raised $35 million in a Series C round led by Medina Capital, with participation from strategic investor First Data, Jump Capital, and Signal Peak Ventures, as well as existing investors. The New York City company now sees 3 million appointments booked monthly across 73 countries in 11 languages on its platform. [via Booker]

PCH, a company which “helps entrepreneurs turn ideas into brands and makes a variety of consumer tech products for major companies such as Apple,” has acquired Fab for a reported $15 million in cash and stock. Fab previously had a $1 billion valuation and raised $325 million. It will “continue to focus on design” at PCH. [Source: Bloomberg]

BlackBerry has unveiled several new smartphones at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, including the touchscreen-focused BlackBerry Leap and a device with a “dual curve slider,” in addition to its keyboard-equipped products. [Source: New York Times]

March 3, 2015

“I hope to have a bigger presence in the tech world. I love coming up with different app ideas, and I have a few more that are coming out. Once you get started and you have this creative bug of ideas that you want to get out, I feel like I’ve partnered with the right team, and now I have the creative outlet to make that happen. I’m happy that people are into it and perceiving it well. I just want to create more apps.”

PayPal is planning to acquire Paydiant, the company behind CurrentC — retailers’ answer to Apple Pay — for a reported $280 million. No word yet on how the companies will mix, nor if Paydiant’s relationship with the industry group behind CurrentC will remain intact. [Source: Re/code]

Microsoft is in talks to acquire Prismatic, a news aggregation service that uses natural language processing to recommend content in which its users might be interested, according to a report from TechCrunch. Apple, Yahoo, Google, and Facebook are all said to have expressed similar interest in the company. (Which is surely a sign of actual interest and not at all an attempt by someone at the company to make it seem like a hot commodity — right?) [Source: TechCrunch]

March 2, 2015

“Just wanted to confirm that the rumors are true — I’m excited to be running Google’s Photos and Streams products! It’s important to me that these changes are properly understood to be positive improvements to both our products and how they reach users.”